The purpose of this blog is to provide analytical commentary on formal and informal labour organisations and their attempts to resist ever more brutal forms of exploitation in today’s neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Saturday, 17 November 2012

The Greek Left and the Rise of the Neo-Fascist Golden Dawn

The imposition of austerity on Greece by the troika
of EU, European Central Bank and IMF has resulted in enormous social hardship
and societal conflict. The rise of the fascist party Golden Dawn in Greece is
one of the most worrying phenomena in this respect. In this guest post, the
Greek social scientist Panagiotis
Sotiris looks at the underlying causes of the party's increasing popularity
and discusses the challenges for the Greek left in resisting and combating fascism.

For the past months there has been an intense
debate both in Greece but also in international media regarding the rise of the
neo fascist Golden Dawn in Greece. The reason is obvious: for the first time in
a EU country a political party that in contrast to most of the varieties of the
European far Right does little to hide its openly neo-nazi ideology and the
culture of the nazi street gang that has been its trademark since the 1990s,
has been the one of the rising political forces. Until now the most common
mainstream attitude regarding the Golden Dawn is to treat it as a worrying
exception in a period of social and political crisis. This is echoed in the
official discourse about the rise of the political “extremes” in Greece (the
other extreme being the Left) against which the institutions of liberal
democracy must be defended. However, what is missing from this discourse on
Golden Dawn as an extreme exception is a serious discussion of what led to its
spectacular entrance in the Greek political scene.

Such a discussion and scrutiny would have shown
that the rise of Golden Dawn would not have been possible, without the
persisting reproduction in the discourse of the traditional Greek Right of very
authoritarian conservative “law and order” elements, galvanized by the equally
persisting ideological and institutional anticommunism that is the common trait
that links the collaborators with the Nazis during the Occupation, the
post-Civil War governments that imprisoned and executed left wing militants,
the 1967-74 military dictatorship, and the post-1974 authoritarian democracy.
This long authoritarian and anticommunist tradition of the Greek Right that can
also account for the conscious choice, for many years, of the leadership of the
security forces to not only tolerate but also endorse far-right ideological
orientations especially within police special forces, based on the assumption
that only a perverse combination of militarism and fascism can make a 20 year old
believe that the merciless beating of protesters is a decent way to make a
living. The result is that in the 2012 general election approximately 50% of
riot police voted for Golden Dawn.

Moreover, the rise of the Golden Dawn cannot be
explained without taking into account the conscious choice from the part of
mainstream parties, New Democracy and PASOK, to endorse anti-immigrant politics
and rhetoric and open racism. When in January 2011 PASOK ministers were
referring to the 300 heroic immigrant hunger strikers as if they were
sub-humans and were planning a big program of building new detention centers,
or when today the Samaras government announces a crackdown on “illegal
immigrants”, it is obvious that the average Golden Dawn member or supporter
feels entirely justified in promoting and engaging in open violence against
immigrants. In the same manner, such official anti-immigrant policies act as a
justification for those employers who rely on immigrant labour to engage in
extreme cases of exploitation and violence, exemplified in the recent beating
and chaining of an Egyptian immigrant working at a bakery in Salamis who simply
demanded to get his wages. No wonder that such strata of small employers have
increasingly turned towards the fascists.

At the same time the rise of Golden Dawn is also an
indication of an extreme social and political crisis in Greece and widespread
feelings of anger that do not always take the form of collective struggle. When
anger takes the form of such an individualized despair and is combined with the
repulsing ideological residue of authoritarianism, conservatism, nationalism,
“lumpen” sexism and violence, still pervading aspects of Greek society, then it
takes the form not of social solidarity and common struggle but of a variety of
social cannibalism that can easily be represented and manipulated by the
fascists.

In order to understand the rise of Golden Dawn, we
must also take into consideration another important development in the past 2
years, namely the fact that the political system has more or less endorsed the
transition towards an authoritarian “state of emergency” as a result of the
economic crisis. The practice of passing laws through parliament in special
fast sessions, without any actual discussion, even if we are talking about the
complete overhaul of labour law, the dismantling of social rights through
simple acts of cabinet, the extreme police violence against protesters and the
intensified effort towards the penalization of collective forms of protest (occupations
etc.), lead to the legitimization of a “strong State” that will “deal with
anomie”. This, in its turn, only gives extra legitimacy to the Golden Dawn’s
openly authoritarian, ultra-conservative, and – despite the populist references
to “Greek workers” – openly pro-business discourse. In a way we are dealing
with complementary processes: On the one hand we have the authoritarian turn of
government and state practices, in a combination of neoliberalism and
authoritarian statism, in a situation marked by open political crisis, an
erosion of popular sovereignty and a complete disregard for democratic
procedure. On the other hand, we have a shift of the discourse of mainstream
parties to the right, both as an expression of the changes in policies and strategy
but also as a result of the rise of Golden Dawn, which also acts as a catalyst
for this right wing turn. The recent wave of anti-immigrant raids by Greek
police and the decision of the Samaras government to make naturalization even
more difficult (in a country where naturalization was already practically
impossible for most immigrants) are just some the examples of this changes.
This does not mean that we dealing simply with Golden Dawn changing the
political debate; in reality mainstream parties use the rise of Golden Dawn as
an opportunity to bring forward their own more conservative positions.

In light of the above, the cynicism of the “two
extremes” schema becomes evident. According to this the social and political
crisis has led large segments of Greek society in a state of anomie exemplified
both in “anomic” social protests, but also the rise of Golden Dawn. For some
neoliberal commentators the rise of Golden Dawn is an indirect result of the
2011 Movement of the Squares, because of the latter’s supposedly
“anti-parliamentary” and “populist” discourse.Nothing is further from the truth. Were it not for the Movement of the
Squares in May-June 2011, that followed the winter 2010-2011 with its series of
racist attacks, the situation regarding the far Right would have been worse. In
reality, the “two extremes theory” is an attack on mass movements and the Left.
By hypocritically attacking Golden Dawn’s “anomie” they attempt to legitimize
the backlash against mass protest, the use of extremely violent police
practices (preventive arrests, plastic bullets, water cannons), the attempt to
penalize forms of protest that until now were considered legitimate
(occupations of public buildings etc.).

Therefore it is no use for the Left to think the
potential answer to the rise of Golden Dawn in terms of a broad alliance of the
parties of the “constitutional arc”. Despite their rhetoric condemnation of
Golden Dawn, both PASOK and DHMAR (Democratic Left) have pushed for the current
authoritarian turn and have accepted the condition of limited democracy and
popular sovereignty imposed by the EU-IMF-ECB Troika. The answer to the Golden
Dawn can only come from the Left and mass social movements. And this is an
urgent task, since currently the rise of the appeal of Golden Dawn acts as a
barrier to the further shift to the Left of petty bourgeois and labour strata
that until recently were part of the electorate of mainstream parties.

But this means the Left must deal with important
challenges:

A) It is well know that fascist movements are
always fuelled by despair and insecurity, especially individualized despair.
Unless broad segments of society regain some form of collective confidence in
the ability to change their lives, through struggle, collective fight and solidarity,
one can expect the continuous rise of fascists. The simple promise of a Left
government cannot lead to such a collective confidence. If we cannot show that
collective struggle can make sure that no household will be without
electricity, no person without some access to medical care, no child without
school lunch, if we do not manage to actually resist aspects of the austerity
measures, if we do not show that solidarity between Greek and immigrant workers
is the best way to make neighborhoods safer, then the appeal of the Golden
Dawn, with all its over-publicized acts of “solidarity only for Greeks”, will
continue to rise. Golden Dawn is trying to build the forms of its own
reactionary hegemony in segments of the subaltern classes; the Left has not the
luxury of simply waiting for governmental power as a “ripe fruit”.

B) Moreover, the Left should not leave “national”
references to the fascists. The current conjuncture also takes the form of a
national crisis. Not in the sense described by traditionally reactionary
nationalist discourse about a “conspiracy of foreigners against the nation”,
but in the sense that the almost neocolonial supervision of a society by the
Troika, the attempt to turn Greece into a “Special Economic Zone” for foreign
capital, the new forms of “European Economic Governance”, lead to a condition
of limited national and popular sovereignty that Greek capital fully accepts as
a means to impose an aggressive accumulation regime. The Left needs to rethink
some form of collective identity for the people living and working in this
country, not in the sense of nationalism but of the collective effort to build
a common future. The anticapitalist social alliance that can lead to the
“Socialism of the 21st Century” cannot be some form of a “nomadic
multitude”. It is will be much closer to a renewed form of a “sovereign people”
engaged in a democratic process of social transformation.

C) The Left cannot leave questions of corruption to
the far Right rhetoric. Attacking corruption and the links between mainstream
politicians and Capital does not mean endorsing some form of reactionary
discourse on “cleptocracy”. Nor does it mean fantasizing about a more “moral”
capitalism. But capitalism is not only about impersonal social forms and structures;
it is also based on very specific money ties between business and politics.
When in the movement of the Squares, one of the most common thing to be heard
was the repeated cry “Thieves!” directed against parliament, this was not a
manifestation of a right – wing “antipolitical” stance, but a justified
reaction against a political class that has combined full endorsement of
aggressive neoliberalism with increasing personal wealth.

D) Finally the Left does not have the luxury to
avoid direct confrontation with the fascists and their military and territorial
conception of politics in terms of controlling areas and neighborhoods.
Although anti-fascist politics, as shown above, have mainly to do with creating
conditions of a renewed radical Left hegemony, finding ways to drive fascists
outside of neighborhoods and preventing them from freely operating is a crucial
challenge for the Left.

Greek society is at a crossroads. The forces of
capital have made it clear that they have adopted a “no holds barred” aggressive
and authoritarian tactic. The rise of Golden Dawn, regardless of how long it
will last or of whether it will countered by a process of reconstruction of the
Right, is already acting as a catalyst for an authoritarian political and
ideological turn. No wonder that the current rising star in New Democracy is
Makis Voridis, an ex far-Right militant that is combining aggressive
authoritarianism with an equally aggressive neoliberalism! Therefore, the
challenge for the Left is not simply to rely on electoral trends but to build
an alternative hegemony. Otherwise, the danger of an even reactionary turn will
remain imminent.

Panagiotis Sotiris teaches social and political philosophy at the Department of Sociology
of the University of the Aegean. He can be contacted at psot@soc.aegean.gr This post was initially
published on his blog lastingfuture, 16 November 2012.